Dhanbad Eye hospital under Govt scanner over Rs 50 lakh forged Ayushman Bharat claims

Dhanbad: A Dhanbad-based eye hospital in Jharkhand has come under the scrutiny of the state health department as the latter has ordered a probe into allegations that the hospital might have forged bills amounting to Rs 50.32 lakh for treatment claims under the government's Ayushman Bharat scheme.  

According to sources in the health department, the forgery was suspected after the Jharkhand Arogya Society found large-scale irregularities in the bills submitted by the hospital, Nayan Sukh Netralay in Dhanbad. 

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The Dhanbad civil surgeon (CS), Dr Alok Vishwakarma has been directed by the society to conduct a proper investigation into the authenticity of the bills. He has formed a three-member committee to probe the allegations of fraud by the hospital. 

The submitted bill of the hospital amounts to Rs 50.32 lakh for the cataract operations performed on 592 patients under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna in the 2021-22 financial year. The hospital gets paid Rs 8500 per cataract operation, as per the scheme. 

The Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna (PM-JAY), under the Government's Ayushman Bharat scheme, is the largest health insurance scheme in the world which aims at providing health cover of Rs. 5 lakhs per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization across public and private empanelled hospitals in India, which is fully funded by the Government and cost of implementation is shared between the Central and State Governments. 

The Jharkhand Arogya Society reportedly found irregularities in the names of patients, their mobile numbers, the timing of cataract operations and names of doctors who operated while screening the bills of the eye hospital, reports Lagatar24. Further, the cataract operations that the hospital claims to have performed on 592 patients are based on the report of a diagnostic centre that has been closed for several years and is not registered with the health department. 

Dhanbad has around 36 private hospitals, including 24 posh nursing homes which are empanelled under the government's Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojna. In April 2022, these private hospitals in Dhanbad had stopped treating patients under the Ayushman Bharat scheme over uncleared dues from the government's side. The pending dues, starting from December 2021, reportedly amounted to Rs 12 crores. 

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